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Sydney Teaching Colloquium on Blended Learning – Day 2

The second day of the colloquium kicked off with presentations by A/Prof Adam Bridgeman, Chemistry, and Dr Sandra Peter, Business School, who spoke about how they have flipped their classes. You can see a short video here on how Adam uses worksheets and demonstrations in his lectures – because when you put some of the lecture content online, there’s more room for fun stuff. Adam showed us some student feedback, including this memorable statement:

Student feedback on @AdamBridgeman's teaching method: "You'd have to be a real f****** idiot if you didn't think this helps" #sydteach2013

Sandra also encouraged people to take small steps towards flipping their classes. Just add some online resources, you don’t need to change the face-to-face classes at first – work towards it. She showed a great slide of herself at home recording a video using her smartphone balanced on a tower of containers!

During question time, Adam said that peer observation was a useful way for academics to develop their teaching. And research agrees (including my own research *cough, cough*). Adam said that sitting in the back row was a good way to see a class from a student perspective.

After the morning tea break, there was a choice of two sessions. I’m not sure what happened in the ‘Learning Analytics’ session, though one of the presenters, Dr Abelardo Pardo, kindly shared his slides via Twitter:

And Craig told us about how he uses creatively uses technology such as iPads used to teach children with autism. He also gave us a bag of ‘digital candy’, which James Humberstone has helpfully collected:

The day concluded with a student panel and group discussions about students’ expectations and experiences of technology. The student panel said that they valued animation, simulations, role plays, online submission of work, facilitated online discussion spaces & the technology working. There was strong agreement that students want lecture recordings and lecture slides to be available online, which sparked an interesting discussion on Twitter:

@AmaniBell they *always* say this, then hardly ever access the slides or recordings.